Beach trip, Lots of processing, Hallie's egg update
Saturday was on-farm pick up day. Though our farm is not conveniently located for many people in our area, quite a few faithful locals come out to the farm every 2nd Saturday of each month to pick up their beef, chicken, and pork herd shares. The kids were helping with morning chicken chores while Amy was at the Abingdon Farmers Market when the first folks arrived to pick up their meat. The kids took off towards the barn to help them find their shares while I finished moving chickens. Afterward, when arriving to the barn, the kids told me to keep farming. They assured me that they could handle the on-farm pick up without me while I checked on the cows and pigs. Hopefully everyone got the meat they were supposed to.
Every three months Amy makes a quarterly delivery to Charolette NC to meet some cousins from Myrtle Beach who graciously take the load of ORVF meat down to folks in their area. This time, however, there was a scheduling conflict preventing them from being able to meet us halfway, so it turned into a great opportunity to turn the meat delivery into a beach trip. Amy, the kids, and my mom left for the beach Sunday, delivered meat, spent Monday on the beach, and came back Tuesday. Although Monday was mostly rainy, the kids were excited about the chance to getaway and experience the beach.
I stayed in the valley to tend to the farm. I got the chickens all moved before church on Sunday. There was a turnaround booking at one of the cabins that afternoon, so with Amy on the road I was nominated to clean the cabin and change out the linens. More farm chores after that. With a trip to the processor early Monday morning, thankfully my cousin Meg helped get the cows in and the hogs loaded on Sunday evening.
On the road to North Carolina early Monday morning to take 8 cows and 8 hogs to the processor. More cabin cleaning when I got back to the farm for another turnaround booking in the other cabin. Thankful for people coming to visit this beautiful valley. Moving chickens and other farm chores had to wait until the afternoon. Then later that afternoon I loaded up another beef and hog to try out a new processor in Abingdon. We’re anxious to see how the quality of their packaging compares to our current processor.
Amy and the kids got back from the beach delivery Tuesday afternoon in time to move chicks from the brooder to the field and catch chickens for Wednesday’s harvest.
On Wednesday we put almost 270 more chickens in the freezer. Our processing crew was much smaller than last week, but we still put chickens on ice at a pace of over 100 birds per hour. Then after an ORVF pulled pork lunch break, we cut up over 100 chickens for parts and packaged the rest whole. Lots of cabin renters over the years have been interested what all goes on around the farm, but very few have been interested in the chicken killing process. This week’s renters not only came over to check it out, they jumped in and helped out with the process.
In addition to another batch of broiler chicks, this week we also welcomed 75 egg layer chicks to the brooder. Speaking of egg layers, update on Hallie’s egg laying enterprise. One of Hallie’s egg layers died last week. “The nicest one” according to her. She’s wanting to buy one or two of these new chicks when they get big enough to start laying. She’s paid over $300 towards her coop and chicken loan so far. Only $200 for her to go.
On the road to the processor I finished listening to “A Confession” by Leo Tolstoy. It gave me lots to think about. Here’s a few more quotes:
“If I exist, there must be some cause for it and a cause of causes. And that first cause of all is what men have called ‘God.’ And I paused on that thought and tried with all my being to recognize the presence of that cause. And as soon as I acknowledged that there is a force in whose power I am, I at once felt that I could live. But I asked myself: What is that cause, that force? How am I to think of it? What are my relations to that which I call God?”
“I understood that I had errored and why I errored. I had errored, not so much because I thought incorrectly as because I lived badly… I understood that the question to what my life is and the answer, an evil, was quite correct. The only mistake was that the answer referred only to my life, while I had referred it to life in general. I asked myself what my life is and got the reply, an evil and an absurdity… and therefore, the reply ‘life is evil and an absurdity’ referred only to my life but not to human life in general.”
“And indeed a bird is so made that it must fly, collect food, and build a nest, and when I see that a bird has done this, I have pleasure in its joy. A goat, a hair, and a wolf are so made that they must feed themselves and must breed and feed their family, and when they do so, I feel firmly assured that they are happy and that their life is a reasonable one. Then what should a man do? He too should produce his living as the animals do but with this difference, that he will perish if he does it alone. He must obtain it not for himself but for all, and when he does that, I have a firm assurance that he is happy and that his life is reasonable.”
“The conception of God is not God, said I to myself. The conception is what takes place within me. The conception of God is something I can evoke or can refrain from evoking in myself. That is not what I seek. I seek that without which there can be no life.”
“I quite returned to what belonged to my earliest childhood and youth. I returned to the belief in that will which produced me and desires something of me. I returned to the belief that the chief and only aim of my life is to do better, to live in accord with that will… That is to say I returned to a belief in God.”
Have a good week.
Will